Deflection

Well, LSJ was not FzD nor Ankha.

And so, the wordings of a lot of ruling are not very precise.

It means in the present case that it needed a long back and forth discussion in order to understand this one which could have been read :
Deflection is played after blocks are declined. Therefore, playing it means that you have already declined to block.

It does not have a lot of sense because it is now excplicit on the card text but it is still valid. (And still have a little value if someone is playing with an old version).

inm8 wrote:

Thanks for finding the thread Timo

The ruling makes even less sense now… Deflection was implicitly illegal to play before blocks are declined and is now explicitly illegal to play before blocks are declined…

when was/would one legally be able to benefit from the implied “declining to block” when playing Deflection?

Does this ruling make the illegal play allowed? If not, what purpose does it serve?

Playing out of sequence is always illegal, but in practice cards aren't played out of sequence. People simply shortcut through the steps where they assume nobody will play any cards. If someone wants to play cards, players will backtrack to that point.

Playing a deflection immediately after someone announces a bleed is thus not out of sequence as such; it just shortcuts a whole lot of steps, is kinda bad form, and also bad play since the bleeder might have played a bleed modifier after blocks are declined which would benefit the bleed bouncer.